I have an old computer that was not supposed to support a cd drive ever. so it boots the cd driver after it begins to load dos. i was wondering if there would be a way to maybe to get it to boot from a floppy with a cd-driver on it so it can then boot from the cd? kinda like the old win98 boot disks that had cd-rom support to install win98 with. any thoughts or suggestions would be great.

yes, i know it's old. but i'm using it to play such old great titles as Duke Nukem! and Cosmo!! and Comander Keen!!!!!

but yeah. i know it's old. but it's a project that i am working on. Here is what i really am trying to do. I have a 486dx 66 that i want to put into this computer. i had a 486sx 50 in it for a while which has an FSB of 25mhz, the 486dx 66 has an fsb of 33mhz. my roomie and i don't want to put the 66 in and blow out the board. the 66 is a 3.3v where as the 50 is a 5v. so the fear is that it might blow out the board or something. the computer run like a top, but i would like to pimp it out as much as we can. so any thoughts would be nice. even if it is something regarding the computer instead of the cd. but i still would like to know what i could do to get the friggin cd to boot. thanks.

If you know how to use your first suggestion of using a WinME boot floppy to get access to your CD, then the same is adequate for a FreeDOS floppy or for UBCD.

The problem, according to your screenshot, is that you are selecting too many programs/drivers/tools/STR's to start during the booting process ( "RAMDISK: too big for memory" ) .

The line "SHSURDRV not installed" is the one indicating that your CD is not accessible (you are out of RAM, apparently).

Selecting less drivers to be loaded (you probably don't need USB for example), you might be able to get it work.

Try "playing around" with the several options of memory managers available, for example (defense modes; or selecting each driver on/off with F8 ).

About changing the FSB, you should first resolve the CD problem . In any case, old hardware is not so tolerant to errors.

IMHO, if you know exactly the jumpers to close or open (nowadays it is easier with no jumpers ) , and you have experience with those old 486 processors AND mobos and you know how to change the BIOS settings for such old mobos, then it is "doable" (but not so recommended, IMHO ) .

But you might want to take into account that more FSB means more electrical stress and more temperature, both problematic for old hardware.

Making aside your hardware project, if you want to try old programs or old games, you may want to try a newer system with some virtual environment with low requirements. An example would be to use DOSShell from http://www.loonies.narod.ru together with DOSBox http://dosbox.sourceforge.net. There are other options too.

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